The Atheist's Guide to Reality_ Enjoying Life Without Illusions - Alex Rosenberg [0]
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THE
ATHEIST’S
GUIDE TO
REALITY
Enjoying Life
without Illusions
ALEX ROSENBERG
W. W. Norton & Company
New York London
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Chapter 1 ANSWERING LIFE’S PERSISTENT QUESTIONS:
DO YOU WANT STORIES OR REALITY?
Chapter 2 THE NATURE OF REALITY:
THE PHYSICAL FACTS FIX ALL THE FACTS
Chapter 3 HOW PHYSICS FAKES DESIGN
Chapter 4 IKEA DIDN’T MAKE NATURAL HISTORY:
GOOD DESIGN IS RARE, EXPENSIVE,
AND ACCIDENTAL
Chapter 5 MORALITY: THE BAD NEWS
Chapter 6 THE GOOD NEWS: NICE NIHILISM
Chapter 7 NEVER LET YOUR CONSCIOUS
BE YOUR GUIDE
Chapter 8 THE BRAIN DOES EVERYTHING WITHOUT
THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL
Chapter 9 FAREWELL TO THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE
Chapter 10 YOU’VE GOT TO STOP TAKING YOURSELF
SO SERIOUSLY
Chapter 11 HISTORY DEBUNKED
Chapter 12 LIVING WITH SCIENTISM:
ETHICS, POLITICS, THE HUMANITIES,
AND PROZAC AS NEEDED
The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: THE BACKSTORY
INDEX
PREFACE
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF REALITY, THE PURPOSE of the universe, and the meaning of life? Is there any rhyme or reason to the course of human history? Why am I here? Do I have a soul, and if so, how long will it last? What happens when we die? Do we have free will? Why should I be moral? What is love, and why is it usually inconvenient?
These questions are unavoidable. But the answers aren’t. Indeed, most people manage to avoid them completely—and do it quite intentionally. People who believe in religion are particularly adept at avoiding the answers. This is not a book for them. This is a book for those who want to face up to the real answers to these questions. It’s a book for people who are comfortable with the truth about reality. This is a book for atheists.
Most people think of atheism as one big negative. Atheists perpetuate the stereotype by devoting so much time and energy to broadcasting the evidence against God’s existence. But if atheism ever were a matter of evidence, it isn’t any longer. Contemporary religious belief is immune to rational objection. Often we are wasting our time refuting it.
There is much more to atheism than its knockdown arguments that there is no God. There is the whole rest of the worldview that comes along with atheism. It’s a demanding, rigorous, breathtaking grip on reality, one that has been vindicated beyond reasonable doubt. It’s called science.
Science enables atheism to answer life’s universal and relentless questions with evidence employing a real understanding of the natural world. Some of the answers it provides to these questions may disconcert you. Several will certainly surprise you. But they are all as certain as the science on which our atheism is grounded. An unblinking scientific worldview requires atheism. That’s why 75 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences admit to being atheists. Four-fifths of the rest say they’re agnostics—no opinion either way. It can’t be a coincidence that 95 percent of the most distinguished scientists in America (along with their foreign associate members) don’t believe in God.
If science made you an atheist, you are already as strongly committed to the serious scientific answers to the unavoidable questions as you are to atheism.
Science reveals a rough reality. But in its reliance on our capacity for experimentation, discovery, and cumulative knowledge, it solves all the great puzzles that people have tried to deal with through faith,